Informed CIO: BYOD Demands a Unified Plan

Sreedhar Kajeepeta05/02/12

Game Changers

In terms of power, richness of multimedia and interfaces, ubiquity, affordability--and complexity--we've come a long way from dumb 3270 terminals. Today, the EUC (end user computing) landscape is growing wild: Windows is getting tablet-ified while Apple is, slowly, gaining some enterprise cred. Cisco pegs the number of connected devices at around 13 billion today and estimates 50 billion by 2020. Form factors and platforms vary wildly. There are some constants, however: They're all connected to a global "distributed computing platform" that we call the Internet. They're way more wireless than wired. And services or apps of varying levels of granularity and security are making employees responsive and productive and our businesses "always on."

CIOs and CTOs can worry and play defense, or we can see this as an opportunity. The future that belongs to the millennials demands that a device of one's choice be supported to run any corporate workload from anywhere at any time. Given the power of Apple's iPad, for example, few workloads should be off limits. A busy physician shouldn't have to drive to work to review a critical MRI report on a holiday--it should be viewable from anywhere as soon as it's ready.

There's been a lot written about bring your own device, but our InformationWeek 2012 Consumerization of IT Survey of 400 business technology professional shows we've only scratched the surface in terms of selecting the right combination of hardware, network infrastructure and software stack to implement device and application virtualization; appropriate connectivity; and identity-based security and policy-based governance; and to enable flexible application interfaces. Here’s a blueprint for a resilient, scalable enterprise BYOD plan based on virtualization and mobile device management technology. (S5120612)